


In the Absence

by mllelaurel



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Reality, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-11
Updated: 2010-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:22:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllelaurel/pseuds/mllelaurel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torchwood gets an alien visitor, but it's not the one Rose has been waiting for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Absence

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on 9/24/2006. Contains spoilers through Doomsday.

Nothing else in the universe could ever sound like the Tardis materializing. Rose was off and running before she had even properly registered what she'd just heard. She tore down the hall, rounded a corner, nearly colliding with two techs and a mail cart, and dashed inside the break room, where the tell-tale noise had been coming from only moments ago.

The room was empty, save for the usual mismatched décor. An old sofa Jake'd found in a dump somewhere and claimed was the most comfortable thing ever made, covered with an afghan Mickey's Gran had knit. Half of Pete's – Dad's – Pete's office, scattered over the lunch table. The old fridge that-

That had been in the shop since Wednesday.

Rose's heart did that thing where it felt like it had stopped, only it couldn't have, cause she didn't exactly have a spare unlike certain people she could name.

She walked over to the fridge, very calm and sedate, closed her fingers over the handle, and pulled. The door opened with a smack and a hiss.

This was the part where she should probably open her eyes. Even at the expense of seeing nothing but three bottles of Vitex and Mickey's week-old chips.

One. Two. Three. On three, she cracked one eye open for a peep.

The fridge was bigger on the inside. Most definitely bigger. Ok, good. She could go back to breathing now. Useful function, breathing. Kept her alive and all.

The Tardis didn't look the way she remembered it, but it was definitely a Tardis, even if the console was made up of neater rows and fewer replacement parts, and the light flooding the control room was more gold than green. It's ok, though, she told herself. The Doctor's allowed to redecorate, especially if he's an alternate universe version of himself.

"Excuse me. Would you mind telling me what you're doing inside my Tardis?"

A tousled blonde head stuck up from under the console, and Rose realized that either the Doctor had a bloody lot of explaining to do, or this wasn't him.

The fact that her visitor wasn't a 'him' at all could be read as a sort of sign.

"Who are you?"

The other woman seemed a master in the art of the elegantly arched eyebrow. "I believe I was asking the questions."

Rose rolled her eyes. "So you're not the Doctor then, are you?"

The woman, who had pulled herself all the way out from under the console, visibly flinched. "How do you know that man?" She made 'man' sound like an expletive, and for all Rose knew, it may well have been in some language or another, the way the Tardis was translating.

Rose smoothed back her hair. It gave her hands something to do. "I traveled with him. You know, back in the day. The very recent day."

The woman looked her up and down, leaving Rose with the impression that she'd just been judged and found wanting. "Hm. I've never heard him mention you." She frowned. "Your name isn't Sam Jones, is it?"

Funny, that's pretty much what Rose had said to Sarah Jane, once. Other than the Sam Jones bit. "Who's Sam Jones?"

"Never mind."

Rose hadn't realized how much she hated those two words, put together like that.

But the woman seemed to have forgotten she was there at all, muttering to herself, "Well, it's no more than I should have expected. When has he ever told me anything? Other than how _brilliant_ he was, of course."

"Was? Where exactly is he?"

"Dead," the woman informed her. Her face was grim for a moment, but she continued in a cheerful tone, before Rose had the chance to protest, mourn, or _anything_, really. "And I'm about to follow his fine example, albeit in not quite so permanent a fashion. So if you wouldn't mind handing me that syringe over on the counter, that'd be lovely. I'd really rather not be conscious for this part."

Rose fumbled but obeyed, unable to do or say anything else as the numbness slowly sank into her bones.

The woman grimaced and Rose could now tell she was in a lot of pain. She took the contraption – which didn't look much like a syringe, in Rose's opinion – pressed it against her throat, took a deep breath and collapsed.

That's when security finally burst inside, and not a moment too soon.

***

Whoever this woman was, it took longer for her to regenerate than it did for the Doctor. Rose refused to leave her side through all the paperwork she had to fill out. She'd always known Torchwood was in charge of alien affairs, but she hadn't expected it to be so calmly prepared for alien visitors, or so enamoured of its own bureaucratic pileup.

Rose had to leave all spaces asking for the visitor's name blank. She hadn't thought to ask, which was pretty stupid of her, in retrospect. When she came to the question about species, she paused, pen in her mouth, before filling in 'Time Lady,' with a big question mark.

Through all of this, the woman didn't so much as twitch a finger. When the boring stuff was done, Rose chased everyone else out of the Tardis, through sheer force of will and feminine fury.

"Come on, then," she said to the unconscious form. "Let's see if we can get you off the floor and somewhere more comfortable."

She found a bedroom easily enough. New and unfamiliar as it was, Rose had a feeling this Tardis was doing everything it could to help her, like the old one had. It took her another fifteen minutes to move the woman and get her changed out of her clothes. (No blushing this time, like there had been with the Doctor. They were all girls here.)

She was in the kitchen, making that essential cup of tea, when it hit her. The Doctor was gone. Not just gone and changed, while remaining himself, effectively, but really dead. _Gone_. And it didn't matter that he wasn't her Doctor; that he'd never met her in all his long and exciting life. With him went her last chance of ever seeing the leather-jacketed Northerner with over-large ears and shadowed eyes, or the laughing, brown-coated man who'd talked to her with breathless enthusiasm about everything but himself again. Not only that, but in this world, neither of them would ever exist at all. The thought tore something out of her, leaving her shaking and too empty to even cry.

The latest check on the mystery woman yielded nothing new at first. Her hand felt perfectly normal, to Rose's touch. It took Rose about a minute to realize that normal, in this case, was very, very bad. Considering how many times the Doctor had held her hand through one terrifying experience after another – and how many times she'd bitched about cold hands, afterward – she should really have known better.

"Come on," she pleaded. "Wake up. Look, I've got you tea! You lot love your tea, right?"

There was no answer, but the woman did shift over to her side. Rose took this as an encouraging sign.

All of a sudden, something in the air clicked, inaudibly, and the woman went all blurry around the edges, like the pixilated bits on that porn tape Shireen had once talked her into renting. Colors muted down and changed, and for a moment, the woman's face was caught in a silent scream. Rose didn't dare touch her, but even from where she stood, the energy going into the regeneration made all her hair stand on end.

Then, it was over. The woman flopped down onto the pillows and let out a long, shaky breath.

"Well, that was spectacularly nasty. I'd say 'let's never do that again,' but the other option sounds even worse. I think." She tilted her head to the side. "Do I think that? You know, I think I do." With that newfound conviction, she reached for the teacup and drained it in one gulp.

Propping herself up on her elbows, she looked Rose's way. "Who are you?" she asked, nose wrinkling slightly, in what Rose hoped was confusion and not disgust.

"Rose Tyler."

"And we've never met before, am I right?"

Rose shook her head.

"Right. That means my memories are all intact. Unfortunately."

Her new form was a little less thin than the old, and somewhat taller, if the way her toes stuck out from under the blanket was anything to go by. Blonde hair had turned dark auburn, with ginger highlights. (The Doctor would have been real chuffed to see that.) She rubbed her eyes, like a very small, very sleepy child.

"What? What's with all the staring? Don't tell me I've gone and made myself bald." She felt around for a lock of hair, to reassure herself. "What?"

"Nothing. You look great. Different, sure, but different's not a bad thing." It helped that Rose hadn't known her, in her old body. Made it a lot easier to be cool about this.

"I look superb," the woman said, and her voice was confident, but there was wistfulness there, too. Rose reached out to take her hand without even thinking about it, twining their fingers together.

"I told you my name," Rose said. "So how about you be fair and tell me yours?"

"Romanadvoratrelundar," she skated lightly over the syllables.

Rose tried to repeat it after her. After Raxacoricofallapatorius, it should have been a breeze. Despite this, she managed to flub it up halfway through. "Um… could I call you Romana, maybe?"

Romana snorted. "Humans. At least now I know where he got so lazy from." With a final sigh, she gave up. "Fine. Feel free. At least you had half the decency to ask first."

"And the Doctor didn't? That was bloody rude of him." Rose had meant to say it lightly, but she didn't expect the way the Doctor's name would catch in her throat, rolling bitter and sharp off her tongue. You weren't supposed to speak ill of the dead. You weren't supposed to speak of them at all, because doing so hurt – physically _hurt_ \- more than anything in her life had ever hurt before. Her eyes burned when she tried to hold back tears, but it didn't feel any better when she gave the hell up and let them fall. Every sob threatened to tear apart her ribcage.

Rose would have expected Romana to say something insulting about her display, or at least to look very uncomfortable, but the woman just let her cry, and when the torrent subsided a little, pulled her in, brushing her lips across Rose's forehead. Rose rested her cheek against a pajama-clad chest, burying herself in the achingly familiar feel of twin hearts beating.

Several long, peaceful minutes went by. Neither of them said anything or made the move to pull away. It wasn't contentment, and Romana wasn't the Doctor, but both were the closest Rose had, so maybe that was why she found herself shifting closer yet and kissing Romana, for all that she'd intended to do nothing of the sort.

Romana's lips felt soft and delicate under hers, too new to have ever been chapped or even to have worn lipstick. Small, clever hands wove themselves into Rose's hair, massaging the back of her head, and Rose thought she heard a needy sigh.

In the end, Romana was the one to break the kiss, but at that point she had managed to pull Rose all the way onto the bed. "Don't mind me," she whispered, right before her teeth closed over Rose's earlobe. "You see, regeneration tends to play havoc with one's sanity. Makes one unstable, you might say. Messes about with one's hormones." She let the last word die down into a purr. "So you see how what you just did was likely not a very good idea?"

Sure didn't seem to have that effect on the Doctor, Rose thought. She was pretty certain she'd have remembered his hands slipping under her shirt to unhook her bra, and rubbing the skin right where the bra strap had dug into it, the way Romana's were doing now. The care, though; the equal mix of sensuality and concern, that was the same.

Romana looked up at her, head slightly tilted, eyes very serious. "Tell me to stop."

Rose didn't.

***

Afterwards, Rose burrowed into the blankets and listened to the gentle whir of the Tardis's engines, while Romana's fingers lazily stroked the spot right below her left hip; the one that made Rose squirm each time. Not like either of them could muster another round for a while, knackered as they were, but Rose got the impression that Romana liked making people squirm.

Apparently, Romana also liked to slur her sentences, when she was tired. "Wazzat?" Rose asked, equally muzzy.

"I said it's a good thing the Tardis is soundproof," Romana repeated, her enunciation perfect this time. "I don't know that I would have pegged you for a screamer."

Rose blushed, remembering cool, slim fingers sliding inside her, making her throw back her head and keen.

"Not that I mind," Romana continued. "It's quite complimentary of my skills. Either that, or you haven't gotten laid in a good long while."

A combination of both was more like it, not that Rose was going to dignify that with a response.

A hush fell over the room again. Romana seemed to be brooding. "Is someone going to come looking for you, any second now?"

Rose shook her head. "Everyone knows I'm here, looking after you. You really needed looking after for a while there," she said quietly.

"Nonsense," Romana insisted. "It was a perfectly standard regeneration. I was lucky," she added bitterly. "So very lucky. Lucky like others should have been."

"It wasn't your fault," Rose said.

"What do you know about it?"

"I know there was a Time War." Actually, Rose _didn't_ know that. Things could have gone very differently in this world. But it made a better guess than most. "Your people fought the Daleks, didn't they? Look, I've faced the Daleks, so believe me, I know there was no choice. What you did was a horrid thing to do, but the alternative would have been so much worse." She thought of Game Station and shuddered.

The look Romana gave her was glacial. "How do you know any of this?"

"Well," Rose tried to think of a good way to say it. "I'm not exactly from around here. This world, I mean."

"Oh, I know that," Romana snapped. "Your timeline is all bent and poking through where it doesn't belong. You don't even smell of this world, but how…" She trailed off. "Oh. The same thing must have happened in your world. The war, and I…"

"No."

"No?"

"No, you didn't." Rose swallowed around the lump in her throat. "The Doctor did."

Romana looked away, so that Rose couldn't see her face. "That idiot. Always had to be the hero, no matter what universe he was in." She curled in on herself. "I knew it wasn't supposed to happen like this. He was supposed to live. He always does, you know. Finds that one way; that one loophole, and _lives_."

Despite all this, she wasn't crying. Rose had no idea how. She'd never seen the Doctor cry, either, even though she'd just assumed it was a bloke thing. Maybe his people simply weren't capable of it.

"I was their President," Romana said. "My people elected me to look after them. Well," she admitted. "They elected me to be a nice-looking figurehead, at any rate. I was put in a position where I could and should have protected them, and I couldn't save them, not a single one. Save my own august personage, of course. How fitting."

"Hey," Rose asked. "What do you think you'd see, if you were to go outside right now?"

Romana turned around to give her another scathing look. "I don't know. Some hallway. Passerby gawking at my naked bum?"

Rose was undeterred. "I'll tell you what you won't see. You won't see dead bodies every which way. You won't see rubble and fried circuitry. You won't see a single Dalek. You won't see a single Dalek in all the universe." That was a lie, but they could deal with the Emperor later. "Everyone here is safe because of you."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Romana asked, her voice emotionless. "The survival of your puny, backward planet is supposed to make me feel better about the destruction of mine?"

Rose looked her right in the eye. "The survival of every puny, backward planet in the universe, you mean."

"Maybe it will," Romana conceded. "But not yet. Not for a long time."

"Fair enough." Rose could sympathize, but she didn't think she could ever entirely grasp the loss, the sacrifice made by the Doctor before, or by Romana now. She just wished…

"You're broadcasting," Romana warned her. "Telepath, remember? Or didn't he tell you that?"

"No. I mean, yes, he did."

"So what do you wish, then?"

"I wish I could have told him all the stuff I just told you," Rose said. "Just flat-out said it, like that."

"Is he still alive?" Romana asked.

Rose nodded, puzzled.

"And he traveled with you. Showed you the world. Faced the Daleks again – and don't think I missed you saying that, or the fact that you _didn't_ tell me everything.

"If he did all those things, then he must have known what you wanted to say, and believed it. He wouldn't have been able to go on, otherwise." Romana's words seemed to imply that she was different, but Rose wasn't so sure of that.

"Still, I wish I'd said it."

"We all wish lots of things," Romana said. "I should go. I didn't plan on staying here even as long as I have, and you've got things to do, likely as not. Not very important things, I bet, but things nonetheless."

Rose didn't say anything, just rolled off the bed and went looking for her knickers.

"Unless you want to come with me, of course," Romana suggested casually.

Rose hesitated, like she wouldn't have done bare months ago.

"I could drop you back off only seconds after we leave," Romana said. "Same place, same time, same everything." She was being perfectly flip about it, but Rose caught that same spark of something in her eye; the one the Doctor used to have, in their first few months of travel. Loneliness, sure, but mixed with hope. A proper Pandora's box concoction.

And somewhere in there, Rose made up her mind. "Just promise me I can come back for visits, when we're not running for our lives? And that you won't drop me off in Aberdeen, when I ask for Croydon?"

"Done and done. You really don't ask for much, do you?"

"Hey," Rose waggled her eyebrows. "I know when I've been made an offer I can't refuse."

"Of course you could refuse it," Romana said. "It just wouldn't be very bright of you."

Rose laughed, feeling it reverberate in her chest, setting loose some of the tension that had settled there. "Remind me to sit you down for a movie night sometime, would you?"

***

Twenty minutes later, the refrigerator in the Torchwood break room shimmered and seemed to vaporize, much to the consternation of the guard posted around it.

***

Inside the Tardis, Rose collected Romana's old clothes, while the other woman programmed their flight plan. She hadn't taken the time to examine them before. Now, she could see that they had been lovely, once, before they got ripped up and covered in ashes, and before they acquired several stains that looked an awful lot like blood.

She snuck a concerned look at Romana, but the Time Lady stood tall, even as she swore at the console, which blinked, but otherwise paid her no mind.

Romana was still hurting right now, and Rose didn't think that would ever go away. Not entirely. But the pain would soften, with time and, if need be, judicious applications of hard liquor. She would be ok, Rose promised that. They'd both be.

Rose had said once that someone had to be the Doctor. Well, Romana wasn't him, and neither was Rose, for that matter. They couldn't fill the gap left by the Doctor, but they could remember him, as he was and as he would have been. They could still travel. They could still save the world; change it; make it brighter.

In the absence of an extraordinary man, they had no choice but to become extraordinary themselves. And that, Rose had a feeling, they'd be more than ok at. They'd be downright fantastic, and maybe even a little superb.

**Author's Note:**

> Gallifrey exists on a black hole that removes it from the normal stream of time and space, which keeps it from being replicated throughout the multiverses, which, in turn, renders this fic AU. Thanks to my beta readers, Amet and Sephy, for this bit of information.


End file.
